As William Faulkner wrote in “Requiem For A Nun”, “The past is not dead. It’s not even the past.” But perhaps the past can, with will, imagination and love, be at least partly transformed.
Blog Posts about My Family
Sitting Pretty: Doris Duke and Lizzie Baker
It is no surprise that Cecil Beaton, fashion photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair in the 1920’s and 1930’s, portraitist of Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess of Windsor, should have taken several shots of Doris Duke; but it is surprising that in 1953 when he visited my parents in Kentucky, photographed Lizzie Baker.
My Apprenticeships
Apprenticeships of any kind—even that sort involved in learning to sew on a button—depend on a bitter and prolonged deprivation of pleasure, a narrow and deep focus that will never allow for what we call a balanced life.
Loving Dogs
Today I find myself in complete sympathy with Doris Duke’s passion, even with the uncomfortable assumption that dogs are sometimes better companions than complicated, changeable humans.
The Best Present
My father’s appetite for what he was reading, and, doubtless, for the sound of his own mellifluous, slightly Southern voice, created in me the appetite for words that has provided the meaning of my life.
Christmas Is A-Coming…
The five of us children were persuaded, or if necessary, dragooned, into producing a truncated version of “A Christmas Carol” which I, as the writer in the family, was charged with shortening.
Gratitude
Although I loved presents, even hankered for them, the ones I received—mainly books—never mattered as much as the presents I gave, and for that I will always be grateful.
The Bingham Estate: My Wedding Dress Comes Home
How extraordinary it seems that this artifact has survived while marriages, wives, husband, aunts, uncles and parents have all withered and passed into oblivion. It seems to me as much a monument to the past as the Lincoln Memorial or the Eiffel Tower, also great erections that long outlasted their makers, their funders and generations of their viewers.
Bingham Estate: The Return of the Wedding Dress
How will I feel when I lift that dusty lid, and rustle through layers of tarnished tissue paper?
The Bingham Estate: Its Marriages
Now, before too long, another generation of young women will need to decide whether they want to compete with the Big House on a day that we all need to believe is one of the most important of our lives. No proof to the contrary seems to matter.